Magic Number Redux
Slashdot has a nice article continuing the discussion about the HD-DVD key. I had this idea a few days ago too (I swear!).
NZ is party to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, so any artistic work automatically falls under copyright. So, create such a work. Then, take a number of your choice. Use an cypher of your choice (see Trav for implementation details, or just use ROTx) to encrypt the work. Then, optionally and to make your case stronger, distribute the encrypted work along with a program to decrypt it in memory, on the fly (see me for implementation details).
The number you used, that, remember, was arbitrary, is now a component of a TPM protecting your work from being copied. Find someone who uses your number and take them to court. Rinse. Repeat if desired.
Now, I posted in the earlier story a number of different representations of the HD-DVD key. The great thing is that there are an uncountable infinity of different isomorphic representations of an number. For instance, you can convert back and forth between a number and a string trivially with a code like ASCII, or just A = 1, B = 2, etc. So, to be really tricky, use one of the isomorphisms of an important string as your key. Your key could be the entire text to the Copyright Act 1994 - so, publishing the law that prohibits publishing components of a TPM circumvention method would be publishing a component of a TPM circumvention method. Got self-reference?
To be really, really tricky we can use the following supposition. It's unproven, but fairly trivial. I also don't know if it has a name. It should. Counter-examples welcome.
Convince yourself of this and we'll continue. Seriously. Let it sink in. No trouble, I'll wait.
Well, from this it follows that literally every piece of information is a component of a TPM circumvention method. Well, even more strongly, any piece of information is a component of any (information using) TPM circumvention method. The only thing that changes between different pairs (i,j) is the component's triviality. The situation is isomorphic (ha.) to capacitors and transistors: they're not TPM circumvention components, even if they are used to break Macrovision. But mod-chip ICs? Not trivial/general enough, so they are TPM circumvention components.
That's damn fucked up.
NZ is party to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, so any artistic work automatically falls under copyright. So, create such a work. Then, take a number of your choice. Use an cypher of your choice (see Trav for implementation details, or just use ROTx) to encrypt the work. Then, optionally and to make your case stronger, distribute the encrypted work along with a program to decrypt it in memory, on the fly (see me for implementation details).
The number you used, that, remember, was arbitrary, is now a component of a TPM protecting your work from being copied. Find someone who uses your number and take them to court. Rinse. Repeat if desired.
Now, I posted in the earlier story a number of different representations of the HD-DVD key. The great thing is that there are an uncountable infinity of different isomorphic representations of an number. For instance, you can convert back and forth between a number and a string trivially with a code like ASCII, or just A = 1, B = 2, etc. So, to be really tricky, use one of the isomorphisms of an important string as your key. Your key could be the entire text to the Copyright Act 1994 - so, publishing the law that prohibits publishing components of a TPM circumvention method would be publishing a component of a TPM circumvention method. Got self-reference?
To be really, really tricky we can use the following supposition. It's unproven, but fairly trivial. I also don't know if it has a name. It should. Counter-examples welcome.
For any pieces of information, i and j, there is a bijective (and so, invertible) function such that f(i) = j, regardless of the complexity of i or j, provided there is no limit to the complexity of f.Well, from this it follows that literally every piece of information is a component of a TPM circumvention method. Well, even more strongly, any piece of information is a component of any (information using) TPM circumvention method. The only thing that changes between different pairs (i,j) is the component's triviality. The situation is isomorphic (ha.) to capacitors and transistors: they're not TPM circumvention components, even if they are used to break Macrovision. But mod-chip ICs? Not trivial/general enough, so they are TPM circumvention components.
That's damn fucked up.